As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Current information handling systems run through considerable initialization code stored in a basic input output system (BIOS) when a computer is powered on and boots up. Coordination of component operations is typically performed with the BIOS and an operating system, such as WINDOWS. The system sends a primary central processing unit (CPU), which is a pre-designated boot strap processor (BSP), an INIT-SIPI command for initialization, at which time the BSP begins running the BIOS software code. During the boot process, the BIOS typically discovers, maps, and initializes all the processors in a system. The various component operations typically include error handling functions that manage errors that arise during operations. Correctable errors can be corrected and uncorrectable errors may be classified as fatal or non-fatal errors. Hardware error handling systems may include variable and fixed threshold limits for identification and classification of a hardware error event. Typically to make changes to the tables that contain such, a system reboot is required. Thus, making such changes requires the time, complexity and down time of a system reboot.
For example, current art methods, such as a single bit error-correction coding (ECC) handling, for example, have a fixed threshold which is usually set for Dual Inline Memory Module (DIMM) fatal error prediction. Some methods address the requirement of variable threshold and provide an interface in a basic input output system (BIOS) setup to configure the threshold value which is a time setting and requires system reboot. PCI-Express fatal error prediction also requires variable threshold to enrich functionality. Many other hardware events may have threshold limits that it would be desirable to change, and the disclosure provided herein in not limited to these exemplary error events.
A baseboard management controller (BMC) is a specialized microcontroller embedded on a motherboard of a computer or server. The BMC is the intelligence in the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) architecture, which defines a set of common interfaces to computer hardware and firmware that system administrators can use to monitor system health and manage the system. The BMC manages the interface between system management software and platform hardware. What is needed is a method of using a server management program for an error configuration table, wherein changes can be made to a hardware error configuration table without rebooting the system